


Arachnophilia

by wendelah1



Category: Fringe
Genre: Fringe Secret Santa, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wanted to help Charlie Francis. She just wasn't sure if she could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arachnophilia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tellshannon815](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tellshannon815).



> Warning: spiders.

"Once you begin watching spiders, you haven't time for much else—the world is really loaded with them." – E.B. White

 

The photograph on her screen was blurred and taken in dim light but the markings of the _Latrodectus mactans_ were unmistakable. Such a pretty one, too. It was a shame the caller had already killed her.

"Yes. You are correct. That is indeed a "Black Widow" spider," Mona said cheerfully. 

"Oh my God, I'm going to die, aren't I?" The young man on the vid screen clutched his chest, and started to sway.

"No! Of course you aren't. However, you should seek medical attention. When exactly did the spider bite you?"

"About 15 minutes ago. I've been on hold. You guys should do something about that, you know," 

_Not my department_ , Mona thought resentfully, then made herself refocus. Fifteen minutes. She located the caller on her map screen and then called up the closest medical facility. Damn. He was in western Carolina, up in the mountains in a fairly remote area. The closest clinic was a good half an hour's drive. But there was a fire station not too far away. Their ambulance team would have an antidote, could get to him quickly, and transport him to the nearest hospital. 

She glanced at the name on the screen, while her fingers continued to type. "Paul. Are you with me?"

"Yeah." 

"I'm sending the paramedics from the Shady Grove Fire Station to your address now. It won't be long." She studied the screen. There was a young woman hovering behind the caller. "Is that your girlfriend, Paul?" 

"God. This thing is starting to swell isn't it?" Paul stared at the bite on his hand and held it up to the screen. Mona looked closely. No swelling detectable, and none expected. 

"Paul." More moaning ensued. "Paul. PAUL. Put your girlfriend on screen. I need to talk to her." Mona hated to raise her voice but this guy was starting to annoy her. The woman moved into view. 

"I'm Lori." Her voice sounded shaky. She looked like she was going to pass out, too. These people. It was a spider bite.

"Hi, Lori. I need you to do two things." Mona tried to project as much authority as she could.

"Okay."

"First, I want you to get some pillows from the bedroom, elevate his arm above his heart, and put some ice on it. Next, do your best to keep him calm. Help is on the way." 

"That's three things." 

Mona liked her job in Science Division. She liked having her own office, with plenty of shelves for the more obscure, older books and science journals that hadn't yet been digitized. She would be happier if she had her own lab space, and didn't have to share it with the entomologists. 

She missed her fieldwork, but the blight that had ravaged large swaths of the Mid-Atlantic States had reduced the need for field biologists in direct proportion to the mass extinction of the species they studied. Her boss had promised her there'd be grant money when she was ready to use it.

What she did not like were these stupid conversations with panicked civilians, all courtesy of the President's newly inaugurated "Your Government Works for You" program. 

"Three things, then," Mona said. "Can you please do as I ask? For Paul?" 

Mona stayed online with Paul and Lori until the ambulance arrived, watching _Nature_ videos in the corner of her screen to maintain her cool. Keeping an arthropodologist with a specialization in arachnids on tap for simple spider bites seemed like a complete waste of her time and the government's money. None of the scientists who'd been drafted for the program were happy about it. "Your Government Works for You" was not working for them. At least there were only 11 more hours left in this shift and she was done for the quarter. 

After ending the call, Mona reopened her email. Announcement of an International Symposium on Spider Silk. That sounded great. The Thirty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Arachnological Society was going to be in Berkeley next year. She should go ahead and request the funding for both. Oooh! What a cutie! Mona loved the little _Nilus philsoni_ the Indian Arachnology Society had posted this week on its webpage. She had to email Dr. Shirbahte and let him know. 

"Damn it," she muttered, as another consult popped up. She opened the vid screen. Wow, that was unexpected. She was certain she'd seen this guy before. She had an excellent visual memory; it was one of qualities that made her so good at her job. Stocky, middle-aged white male, mole on his left cheek, beginning signs of rosacea on his nose, fine brown hair, thick glasses, wearing a collared shirt and a lab coat that had seen better days. He needed a shave, too. "Hi, this is Mona Foster."

"Dr. Foster, I'm Bill Hartmann with Fringe Division. We've got a big problem. An agent has been infected with an unknown organism, which is spreading rapidly through his body..."

Fringe. That explained why he looked familiar though not why he was calling her. Mona interrupted his spiel. "I think you have been routed incorrectly. I'm an arachnologist. I'm sure you want Micro or maybe Parasitology. I study spiders."

"I am the parasitologist. I wasn't routed anywhere. I called you directly. We want you. This thing—our lab says it's an arachnid or a close cousin to one." Dr. Hartmann looked...panicked. Apart from an irrational avoidance of sushi, the parasite guys were normally unflappable. 

"That's impossible. Spiders don't infect people, not the way you're describing. And they aren't parasitic," Mona said patiently. 

"I know that! Can you just come down to the lab here and take a look at this thing? If we can't find a way to stop it, our patient isn't going to make it." 

"Yes. Of course. I'll be right down." Mona shut off the vid screen and touched her ear cuff. "Jessica? It's Mona. I've got a consult downstairs. Can you cover for me?" After a moment's hesitation, she took off her leather spiderweb jacket and put on her white lab coat with the dorky Science Division emblem on the pocket. 

~/~/~

Mona was not prepared for what she saw under the microscope. She looked up at Dr. Hartmann. "This can't be happening."

"And yet it is," Dr. Hartmann said grimly. 

"It's nothing found in nature, but you already know that." She peered at it again. "This looks part tech, part biological, but I guess you already know that, too." The "spiders" were self-replicating, and very efficient at it. It looked like their spinnerets had been co-opted into making more of themselves instead of silk. Without silk, you couldn't really call an animal a spider. _Those bastards. Taking something of beauty and turning it into this monstrosity._

"How did he contract it?" she said tightly. Knowing the mode of transmission could be useful. 

Hartmann rubbed a hand over his chin, frowned and looked away. "You know I can't tell you that. You don't have the clearance." 

"Maybe you should get me the clearance if you want my help," Mona said testily. "What's happening to your agent?" 

"So far, high fevers, pruritus so intense he had to be put in restraints to keep him from scratching off his skin, severe generalized pain." Dr. Hartmann waved his arms in the air. "They've got him under conscious sedation now to control his symptoms. I've never seen anything like it."

Mona was at a loss. "Dr. Hartmann, I'm not a biotechnology engineer or a geneticist or..." 

His face looked drawn with fatigue, "Bill, call me Bill. I know, you're a research scientist, not a clinician. I was just hoping..." 

"Bill. I'm sorry. I've never heard of anyone using spider genes for anything like this." God, he looked so discouraged. "I can do a thorough literature search. See if this type of hybridization has been tried before and by whom," she offered. _It's not much but it's something._

He brightened a little. "We're working on figuring out what gene sequences were used. Maybe we can work with that, find something to act as a suppressor. Our nanotech people are trying to see if this thing has an off switch."

"I'll do my best." 

"I appreciate that." He hesitated. "I'll make a call, get you access to Agent Francis's medical files and anything else you need in the Fringe MedSci database."

She hated to ask. "How much time does he have left?" 

"I can't say for certain, I doubt anyone can until we know what we're dealing with. But I can take you over to the ward. The Critical Care attending's name is Sanchez, Tania Sanchez. If she's not at his bedside, she's asleep in the resident's room. I don't think she's gone home since he was admitted."

"Which was when exactly?" Mona got up and followed Bill out through the lab and into the corridor. He had long legs and a fast stride. 

"What day is it today?" he said, looking chagrined. "Friday. So, late Wednesday, I guess."

They stopped in front of the elevator. While Bill put his ID card into the slot and his thumb against the scanner, Mona looked at him surreptitiously. "It sounds like you haven't been home either." 

"Yeah, well. These guys are all heroes. On the front lines, doing their best to keep the rest of us safe." He cleared his throat. The elevator door opened and they stepped in, riding silently to their destination.

~/~/~

Mona was relieved to be back in her office. The scene in the ICU reminded her of why she hadn't applied to medical school. Agent Francis was laying in a hospital bed, surrounded by blinking, beeping machinery, with tubes coiling out of every orifice, his arms and legs held in tight restraints. Even with all the sedatives, he was moving restlessly, his face contorted in pain. On the way, she'd passed a waiting room where a woman with gray hair and sagging posture was crying softly.

She wanted to help Charlie Francis. She just wasn't sure if she could. 

She took off her lab coat and hung it up on the door hook. Sitting down at her desk, she glanced at the time at the bottom of her screen. Nearly midnight. 

Dr. Sanchez had been blunt about Charlie's prognosis. "He doesn't have long. His kidneys are failing, and dialysis filters are not designed for this type of problem." 

The pathogen might be a biological weapon, albeit a stupid and inefficient one. But that didn't matter because she needed a much higher clearance to get access to military secrets. She doubted anyone not directly involved in that sort of research had access to it. Maybe the Secretary of Defense. Mona set up a search parameter, targeting use of arachnid genes in biotechnology. She couldn't read everything, and anyway, if the results were published in the usual places she should have at least heard about it. She decided to begin her search in the internal Fringe data base. Dr. Hartmann said he'd never seen anything like Charlie's case but that didn't mean that someone else at Fringe hadn't. 

Damn. Nothing.

Maybe a different set of genes, then, perhaps some sort of insect? She began entering the names of different hexapoda orders, doing multiple searches at once. 

Nothing popped up, except this one case, dated April 2000, from back when Fringe was still part of the now defunct FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

One case. _Lasioderma serricorne_. Well, maybe that's all she'd need. Mona opened up the file and began to read. This organism was created accidentally by one of the Big Three tobacco companies, while trying to make a safer cigarette, an oxymoron if she'd ever heard one. The agent had been infected by the very thing he was working to uncover, the vector carried in the smoke from infected tobacco. What was really creepy was the patient hadn't even been the smoker, he'd just been in the room with the guy. Damn. She shuddered and began skimming until she came to the conclusion. "After receiving 30 mg of 3-(1-Methyl-2-pyrrolidinyl)pyridine, the patient's heart stopped. Following successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Patient X made a complete recovery, eventually returning to duty." 

Methyl pyrrolidinyl pyridine. Nicotine. So, they'd injected the patient with a massive dose of nicotine--enough to kill a grown man--and it had killed him. But they had brought him back to life. The beetle larvae infesting his lungs had died. But he lived. 

Nicotine had been used as systemic pesticide, banned now, of course, but still. It was an ingenious idea and it just might work. The nicotine alone wouldn't rid Charlie Francis of his "spider" infestation; the hybridization made his a more complex problem, but it might buy them some time until she and his doctors could find a better, more permanent solution. 

She downloaded a copy of the old file onto her computer and grabbed her tablet. She touched her ear cuff and started toward the elevator. "Listen, Bill. Can you meet me in the ICU? I want to talk with Dr. Sanchez again. I think I've found something that might help our patient." 

~/~/~

Epilogue

Mona was in the Entomology Lab examining a specimen of _Mallodon dasytomus_ when she was interrupted by visitors. Visitors who hadn't bothered to make an appointment or even call ahead.

"Drop your file request on the table. I'm a little busy right now," she said, not bothering to look up.

They were nothing if not persistent. 

"Uh, Fringe Division. I'm Agent Olivia Dunham, and this is Agent-–" 

Fringe Division. Fringe _agents_. She looked up. 

It was him. Her Fringe agent. "Agent Charlie Foster--Francis. I'm Foster...Mona Foster." He was going to think she was an idiot. Stop smiling at him. Stop now. 

"We, uh--we--we met before?" 

Oh God. He didn't remember her. "I treated you for your arachnid infestation. I'm not surprised you don't remember me. You were in a lot of pain. So how are the spiders?" she said, trying to sound disinterested and clinical, and failing utterly. 

"Uh, they're good. They--they--sometimes they just itch a little bit," Charlie said, smiling. He was so adorable. 

"Maybe you just need someone to scratch it." Did she really just say that? She did. He didn't look unhappy about it though. 

She flipped her brain back into sciencing mode and identified the beetle they brought in. _Mansohnium Boogliosus_. The Skelter beetle, extinct ten years now, along with its woolly hosts. 

After the agents left, Mona thought about it for about fifteen minutes before she called the Fringe Division and left a non-urgent, personal message for Agent Charlie Francis.

She should be really excited about this beetle, since it was no longer extinct, and it had mutated, _and_ it was now eating its way out of people's faces. She should be able to get a paper out of this, unless Fringe made it classified just like they had Charlie's not-really-spiders. 

Instead, she was thinking about...scratching an itch.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful inhouse beta, idunnoh. The cross-over with _The X-Files_ was unintended, I swear.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You Are Joyously Invited](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3887719) by [kerithwyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/pseuds/kerithwyn)




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